ReadyNAS Ultra 6 plus vs. Pro 6

The Pro 6 can do everything the Ultra 6 Plus can plus more. However I don't think the Pro 6 includes the Memeo backup software but rather a free trial of Acronis.

jeburnett wrote:

I see questions like this from time to time but none that directly address my interest. I like all the prosumer capabilities in the Ultra 6 (Tivo, Memeo, etc.) but the Pro 6 has the 5 year warranty and the promise of better performance from the faster processor. When you look at the feature sets of both you see two totally different target audiences and the features of the Pro 6 seem to NOT include the features of Ultra 6 I want. Is this a correct read and if so, is there way to outfit the Pro 6 to more Ultra-like? Thanks, Jonathan

mgdm is correct - the pro includes dlna, etc. but does not have Memeo backup. Since I already was running Acronis, that didn't matter to me, so I went with the Pro 6.

BTW, I am seeing some postings here from folks having trouble with the Tivo functionality, so that might be worth following up on.

Skywalker's released an add-on that fixes the TiVo issues: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=340169#p340169

I believe this fix is included in the upcoming 4.2.20 firmware.

I need to make this decision myself this week. Can someone outline what the Pro does that the Ultra does not?

Also are there any test results available that show how much faster at serving data the Pro would be over the Ultra Plus? We're primarily be using ours for photo storage and with the speed increase compared to our NV+ I'm hoping we can edit wedding photos (80 GB to a folder) directly off the NAS (over AFP).

Obviously the Pro will be faster, but will it be $130 faster (or is most of the cost for the extra "business" features)? :D

Flash wrote:

I need to make this decision myself this week. Can someone outline what the Pro does that the Ultra does not? Also are there any test results available that show how much faster at serving data the Pro would be over the Ultra Plus? We're primarily be using ours for photo storage and with the speed increase compared to our NV+ I'm hoping we can edit wedding photos (80 GB to a folder) directly off the NAS (over AFP). Obviously the Pro will be faster, but will it be $130 faster (or is most of the cost for the extra "business" features)? :D

If you're going to be using the ReadyNAS just for backup or sharing, you won't see a difference between the Ultra 6 and the Pro 6. However, if you will be utilizing an add-on that does transcoding or will be doing incremental backups (i.e. with Remote Replicate option available only on the Pro) straight from the ReadyNAS, the extra horsepower from the Pro 6 can make things go faster. Also, the Pro 6 has a 5-yr warranty vs. 3 years for the Ultra 6. My recommendation for businesses (and high-end prosumers) is to go with the Pro 6.

BTW, you can go to the product pages on readynas.com for the respective systems and get performance data. You won't see much difference with sequential data as both systems are more than capable of saturating the gigE bandwidth.

Will multiple people be connecting their client machines to the NAS at once?

If you have a managed switch you can setup 802.3ad LACP teaming with the Pro 6 for improved performance. One user could be doing a large file transfer to the NAS and the other users could still access the NAS most likely with little noticeable difference to normal.

I Have both.
Get the Pro.
Steaming with the Ultra is very speculative.

Both great but the Pro has more grunt and it is noticable.

Thank you for the replies yoh-dah, mdgm and Sylvia. I knew those performance charts were hiding somewhere!

Our new NAS will strictly be used for storing photos. It won't be streaming media or anything else. It'll usually only be one person at a time, but at most would be two, browsing the 80 GB folders full of images with Photo Mechanic (kinda like Adobe Bridge). Opening them in Photoshop then saving them back. (My wife is a wedding photographer).

Since mdgm mentioned it, our switch is the D-Link DGS-1024D that I wrote about in the Mac forum.

The NV+ is almost unbearable to work off. It is OK for smaller folders (like portrait sessions) but it is almost less frustrating for weddings to just spend the time to copy the whole folder to the local machine before editing and then copy it back. My wife is really looking forward to the updated horsepower, and available space, of a new NAS.

My only other quandary is which 3TB drives to get...

.

The $130 difference between the two on Amazon had me unsure. However after seeing the Pro 6 for only $908 at Newegg, just $30 more than the Ultra 6 Plus, we pulled the trigger.

Thanks for all the help guys.

The Pro6 pops up for 755-850 quite often. I got mine at DocumentIO.com for $815